Microscopic Calculation of Relaxation of Liquid Crystalline Order

Abstract

In the microscopic point of view, a decay rate of the nematic liquid crystalline order is formulated in a tractable form on the basis of a projection method, which is calculated by a Monte Carlo simulation of the Gay-Berne particle system.  Three types of systems with different particle lengths are studied, where at a sampling during early stage of relaxation process, the decay rate is shown to increase as the length of the particle becomes short. At the system of particles of length with 3 times of a diameter, remarkable increase is observed at a transition to a disordered phase. The relaxation process of an order parameter is also simulated simultaneously in place of an experiment, from which the decay rate at the system with 3 times length is tentatively obtained as a macroscopic estimate by fitting the Monte Carlo curve of the order parameter to an exponential function.  Both estimates of the decay rate are compared, where the correspondence is qualitatively good.

Keywords:

• decay rate
• Gay-Berne model
• molecular theory
• Monte Carlo simulation
• nematic order
• projection method